Lollipop

by David Fletcher

  But of course! The lock-block. He had it on him. Being a good detective was all about being prepared. And he was. He had the facility to get into those rooms after all. And forget all that squeamish conscience stuff. He was on a quest, remember. It could just be that old blondie was in one of those rooms. It was possible. Why, after all, was he looking for her? He might have been in a race to save her from some abductors. And if the abductors had beaten him to it… well, he might now be able to undo their dirty work…

  Oh get on with it, Tenting. Just have a look in one of them. Satisfy your damn curiosity. And then scarper.

  He chose the end door, the one furthest away from the spiral staircase. The lock-block worked a treat. He was in within seconds. And immediately he wished he wasn't.

  It was a storeroom. It was a storeroom full of little glass barrels. And in each of these little barrels was a human body-part floating in a clear liquid; a leg here, a hand there, a flabby bit from somewhere inside just underneath, and right next to where he stood, a pair of eyes sitting incongruously above a pair of lungs. Whoever had stacked the barrels round here had no sense of order or no sense of taste.

  Renton then became aware of two more body parts: a chest and a set of bowels. And they were both his own. One was tightening and the other was loosening. He'd have to get out of here quickly - before there was a coronary or a catastrophe - or possibly both.

  And when he was out, when he was safely back outside the clinic, he found that what he wanted was a cup of coffee, but a cup not a kup. He may for a moment have mislaid his nerve, but he hadn't yet mislaid his mind.

  24.

  It was early evening, and in the lower deck gymnasium there was a game of quoits in progress.

  The game was thought to possess a very ancient heritage. And whilst its form may have changed over the aeons, its essence had certainly not. It was still a “sport” that nobody took seriously, played by people with time on their hands and with nothing better to do. And it now lived on within the confines of space cruisers and the like, a harmless pastime that required little skill and even less dedication, and by which passengers and trippers could while away the hours.

  In the present version, played by anything between four and twelve players, each player was equipped with a tiny hand-held joystick and a quoit. The quoit was a hoop of about twelve inches in diameter, which could be flown by the use of the joystick. It could be turned, banked, hovered and accelerated - all by movement of the joystick in different planes. And the object of the game was to lasso one of the other players with your quoit whilst avoiding being quoited yourself. The joystick technology was, however, very sloppy, and most successful quoits of an opponent were more to do with luck than with skill or judgement. But this was intentional. More sophistication, and with it more accuracy, would have robbed the game of what it was all about: inept amateurism and a complete lack of purpose. Winning wasn't important; it was the taking part - and being seen to be trying - but not trying too hard.

  This was definitely the case with the game now taking place in the Lollipop gymnasium. Three men and three women were belting it out with their joysticks, dodging about and ducking and diving but all the time laughing. It was all about having fun, all about enjoying one's self. And, this being the Lollipop, all about having another excuse to take one's clothes off. For quoits on this ship were always played as strip quoits, one garment lost for each time one was “quoited”. And the winner was… well, it didn't really matter who the winner was. As long as enough clothes had been discarded along the way, nobody seemed to care.

  Two of the men were doing very well - or, judged by the real objectives of this particular game, very badly. One had lost just his shoes, and the other just his shoes and his shirt. And the game was by now an hour old.

  The third guy was doing much much better and was now down to his bra and pants. Yes, this bloke was a cross dresser as well as a regular player. He was down here virtually every evening perfecting his skills of catching an opponent's hoop around his neck and so justifying the public removal of his women's clothes. He was a dark man and a little more than normally hirsute. Indeed his body hair was just about everywhere. It sprouted from the top of lace-rimmed cups and even more so from the top of his lace-rimmed briefs. But he seemed unconcerned, quite oblivious to the oddness of his appearance - and much more concerned with releasing himself from the last of his womanly weeds. He was now openly inviting a quick quoit by loitering under an opponent's hoop - and entirely ignoring the handling of his own joystick.

  One of the female players had adopted some similar tactics - but for a different reason. She was still fully clothed, and obviously becoming aware of her incongruity compared to the other two women. One of these had been reduced to just a skimpy vest and some even skimpier knickers. And the other one to just a shoe!

  This one had so far played the game with paramount incompetence. She had yet to quoit anybody else - and this even after remaining stationary for long periods while she took aim. It was this static tactic that had led to the early removal of her clothing. And then she'd even got that wrong, removing everything in the wrong order. So she was now hopping around, giggling and jiggling and looking strangely comical - despite having the complete set of her erogenous zones on display. But it was all in the spirit of quoits. All in the fine tradition of that most ridiculous of games.

  Just as the cross dresser had succeeded in diving through another quoit, a Lagooner appeared at the gymnasium door. Nobody took any notice of him. He appeared about this time every evening and would simply walk along the gymnasium wall, barely bothering to glance at the quoiters, and then out of the gymnasium through another door near its stage. (The gym doubled as a theatre, and at one end there was a proper stage with all the gubbins.)

  He did exactly the same on this occasion. The hairy man was unhooking his bra and slipping it off seductively - and the goonie just strolled quietly past. He looked neither to his left nor to his right nor turned to look back as he opened and then departed through the door by the stage.

  The hairy man's opponents now knew how hairy his chest was and the game had recommenced. The clothed woman had her eyes on a very promising hoop, the vest-and-knicks contestant had nearly quoited herself by mistake, and old one-shoe had just tripped over and was now performing a very literal arse over tit. Her revelations caused the nearer clothed man to mishandle his joystick, and as his quoit shot upwards in an arc, there was an absolutely enormous crashing sound from somewhere behind the stage.

  Pow! Quoitus Interruptus - but like never before! All of the players just froze where they were - and even one-shoe's extended roll across the floor came to a premature halt.

  That really was a crash. It sounded as though the entire end of the gymnasium had just caved in.

  The hairy man was the first to gather his wits, and he made a dash for the door by the stage. When the others caught up with him he was standing in the area just behind the stage looking at a million pieces of glass. They were silvered pieces of glass, and they'd once made up a huge “prop”, a giant-sized mirror.

  Somebody must have knocked the thing over. But who? And if it was the silent passing Lagooner, why? And why was he not still here?

  And this absence of their familiar Lagooner was the biggest mystery of all. That crash had happened just a second or so after he'd walked through the door from the gym - and into the space where the mirror had fallen. He must have been there when it happened. But where was he now? Where had he gone?

  And why did the quoiters not see him on his rounds the next day or the day after that…?

  It was as the hairy man later observed 'all quoit mysterious'.

  …but what would you expect from a man who wore lace underwear? Didn't he know that lace was passé and had been for years?

  'And in off-white. Well, I swear, my dear, off-white. And with his skin as well. Ridiculous. Quite - and I said “quite” - ridiculous.'

  25.

  Detective Tenting
had slept badly. His experiences of the previous evening had left him troubled and, he had to admit, a little shaken. Despite all his Tickler training, the sight of all those body parts, all those horribly disassembled people, had really spooked him. But on top of that they had shattered an illusion; they had robbed him of his fascination for the Lagooners. And they had replaced it with something he was still a little reluctant to confront.

  There was only one thing to do, the one thing that would steady his nerves and help him map out his next steps. And that, of course, was some serious list making. Sitting here in his cabin in his obligatory black underpants, he would set out the good and the bad, first a list of what were the assets in his life, the assets that would sustain him through all his adversities, and second, a list of these adversities, the liabilities in his life that were crumpling his karma and threatening much worse.

  So now he embarked on this task - with the assets first. And there was no question about the very first. It was:

  1. His partners. His business partners who were also his closest friends: Madeleine and Boz. And, of course Madeleine was even more than his closest friend; she was his lover. And that alone could sustain him forever. But that's all he needed to record. It was just stating the obvious. Time to move on…

  2. Progress. Yes, there was no doubt about it; he was making some measurable progress in his first real job as a detective. OK, he hadn't yet found the woman. But he had developed a sort of strategy. And it was working. He was getting nearer his goal. And who could tell? Success might be waiting just round the corner. And this was a real asset. Yes, but what was the next one? Well… there was…

  3. His hair. OK, it wasn't quite in the same league as his friends and his progress as a detective… but this living on the Lollipop was working wonders for his hair. He thought it might be the water… But whatever it was, his hair was simply behaving itself like it had never done before. It was far less wayward. And, of course, there was no wind and no rain on the Lollipop. This enforced stay on this dreadful vessel had, as an enormous consolation, the complete absence of any of that awful weather stuff, which normally did so much to undo all his careful grooming. And this wasn't just an asset, this was a really significant bonus…

  But he could fool himself no longer. An extended eulogy on the tonsorial benevolence of the ship's water and its still air was no more than a way of delaying that switch to the bad, the inevitable but very necessary litany of the liabilities in his life. The first was easy:

  1. The absence of his friends. He desperately wanted the company of his two partners. He'd even swap the still air of this spaceship for a raging gale, if only they could be with him now. He was that desperate for their company. But he knew this was impossible. Just as impossible as the next item on his list:

  2. His leaving the ship. He was beginning to feel that he was in a madhouse, a madhouse for the sexually insane. And he really didn't like it. There was just so much of it, so much in-your-face sex - literally if you wanted it. And the only real escape was the tiny fortress of his cabin. But one couldn't conduct one's enquiries from one's cabin, and Renton needed to mix it with the inmates. And that was wearing, very, very wearing. And well, could he admit it to himself? Yes he could. And this was worse than the surfeit of the stuff; it was the occasional - and not that rare-occasional - enjoyment of it. Well, it was no less than inevitable, wasn't it? Hell, there were things on this ship that could only be relished - no matter how sickly the surfeit. There had been changing bodies with that woman, of course. That was one of the most phenomenal experiences of his life - and one of the most enjoyable. But there had been other, less extraordinary incidents, all of which had also been quite delightful. The Dream Drome, that display of body painting, the sights he'd seen on the Carnal-ival floor - and that woman, the woman with the hose reel… And there were others, and all of them left him with a sharp taste of guilt. And this guilt mixed with his growing loathing for this ship was a real hardship. It merited nothing less than a very prominent position amongst his list of most worrying woes. And so too did the next item:

  3. The body parts. It was time to confront the real damage that they had done and what it might mean for the rest of his stay on this ship. He knew what it was. It was a feeling of betrayal. When he'd first arrived on the Lollipop, he had given little if any thought to its band of odd custodians. But then he'd become intrigued by them - through Orphenia - and he'd also become fascinated by them, as one becomes fascinated by the flora of a new world, by its new beauty and by its new mystery. Then this fascination had been swept away by that photo of the probes - only to be put back firmly in place by Orphenia's helping hand. But should it have been? What was really going on with those probes? Was the Dream Drome just an elaborate cover, something to throw nosey-parkers like Renton clear off the scent? Hell, it was a bit strange that Orphenia had turned up just at the right moment, just when he needed to be pushed into the Drome, and into believing that all that probe stuff was just harmless fun. It had been for him. But that proved nothing. And now these pickled bits of humans. He'd like to see Orphenia explaining them away as harmless fun, as something that threatened no one's safety. No, something sinister was going on aboard this ship, and Orphenia was involved - along with all those other strange creatures. And Orphenia had betrayed him. He could come to no other conclusion. He felt sad and more alone than ever. And he also felt confused. For if he was right - and he knew he was - then there was a wrong on board this ship that needed to be put right, a very bad wrong that could be costing people's lives. But what could he do? As well as a lack of resources, he had a total lack of jurisdiction. Renton might have good reasons for suspecting that the Lagooners were doing dreadful deeds, but he had no authority to do anything about it. And even if he reported his suspicions, he doubted whether any established authority would intercede. The SS Lollipop was by its nature a vessel outside the law - anybody's law.

  So his list making had now reached its real purpose, the consideration of what to do about finding those body parts and how to fit this in with his search for an elusive blonde. And almost before he knew it Renton had reached the end of his consideration. He'd decided what to do.

  The jurisdiction point would win the day - assisted to a small degree by the lack of resources point. He would ignore the Lagooners and their ill doings for the present and focus exclusively on the blonde in a haystack. When he'd found her and then contacted Boz, he would let Boz - and Madeleine - in on the story, and together they could work out how to deal with the other.

  So that deferred it. That deferred the Lagooners issue as firmly as it could be deferred. Now he would go for the blonde again, a single object for his attentions. And he even had a specific plan for the next step in his campaign. It was Carnal-ival night again. And now armed with a picture of his target - one he'd committed to memory - he reckoned that this would be the best place to continue his wait and watch detecting. He would go there again. She was such a stunner, this bird, he couldn't believe that she wouldn't be there. And if she were, he would have her. She'd be nabbed.

  He almost began to feel cheerful at the prospect. But then he thought of Orphenia again - and of an angel falling from grace - and he was immediately depressed.

  And still without his friends…

  26.

  Bessie was fed up.

  Even though being the chairman and chief executive of the mighty Trampul conglomerate didn't make you instantly recognisable, you could never be sure. And being spotted on this particular space junk was hardly the sort of recognition she would have wanted. So, in the interests of anonymity, she hadn't been out of her stateroom since her arrival on the Lollipop. And she'd now become thoroughly tired of it.

  That said, she was enduring it as best she could. And at least it kept her away from all that aberrant behaviour out there, all that nasty sex stuff, and all that disgusting intimacy. That wasn't Bessie's scene. It never had been. In fact, human relations on any level - social, intellectual or sexu
al - had never been her strong point. And anyway, they all tended to get in the way of that burning ambition of hers. So it was as well to ignore them.

  Of course, she hadn't ignored them entirely. And certainly not insofar as they led to a family… After all, the Trampul organisation was an enterprise with a family ethos. Families were its very business. So there had been a time when Bessie had thought that a family would help her. That having her trolley decked out with any number of offspring would actually assist her career. And that meant a mate and then some matings with the mate - as quickly as possible - and with the minimum of interference to her work. And then she'd be kitted out with the right gear, with the acceptable credentials. And then she could more or less forget them…

  Gerck didn't mind. He was the chosen mate. And he was about as smart as a fire in a tent. In fact, it was in a tent that Bessie had seduced him - or more precisely blackmailed him into marrying her on the strength of a French kiss constituting constructive rape. And he'd been willing enough anyway. He was a lazy sod and he saw Bessie as a ticket to an easy life - and one where Bessie would feature very little; her career would take care of that. He was right. And, in the event, he had an easier life than he could ever have imagined. Possibly something to do with the fact that Bessie couldn't quite manage the mating bit (on account of all those fumblings and all those fluids…), and so pretty soon had to abandon the idea of having any children at all. And after that he barely ever saw her - and thereby ended up as one of the happiest and possibly one of the most relaxed married men in the entire universe. Whereas Bessie was always so stressed…

  Her job was just so demanding. She had so many people to see, so much information to absorb, and so many decisions to make. And only she could do it. Only she could handle it. Her rôle was pivotal. She was the vital part of the machine that was Trampul, the engine without which it would fail. And she therefore had no choice but to take every responsibility that came her way - and never give any of them up. Even when it became apparent that she just couldn't manage them. But that was all part of the game. Grab all the balls you can. Keep as many in the air as you can. And ignore the dropped ones. And, instead, turn up the menace. Terrorise the buggers. And that way, they'll ignore them as well. And all they'll do is acknowledge your talent - and your outstanding performance - and your more than outstanding importance…